It is early spring now, and I believe many families have put such a delicious game on the table-bracken. Pteridium aquilinum is known as the "king of mountain vegetables", which is refreshing and smooth in taste and deeply loved by the public. In recent years, many businesses have labeled bracken as "natural food" and "health food" to encourage everyone to eat more.
But recently, many experts have claimed that bracken is carcinogenic! As soon as this statement came out, netizens expressed disbelief: "The bracken I have eaten for so many years is actually a' poison'?" Do I really have to say goodbye to my favorite bracken? ..... while saying it's "health food", it's also called poison. What is the truth?
As early as 1980s, Japanese scientists extracted "protopterin" from bracken. Studies have shown that protopterin is the source of biological characteristics of Pteridium aquilinum, which can cause acute Pteridium aquilinum poisoning, sheep blindness, biological mutation, chromosome breakage and genetic damage. Subsequently, the World Cancer Organization listed protopterin as a class 2B carcinogen. To solve this problem, the reporter interviewed Yun Orfila, a popular science writer, a member of the Scientific Squirrel Society and a doctor of food engineering. He said: "People can't eat bracken to the point of acute poisoning, and the chronic effects may only increase the risk of cancer. But the risk still depends on the amount of food. "
Obviously, "increasing cancer risk" is not exactly equal to "carcinogenicity", and the size of "cancer risk" directly depends on how many "carcinogens" you consume. So how much bracken do we eat to really harm our health? In this regard, Yun unintentionally said: "This substance does not have enough data to formulate a' safe dose'. But judging from the current scientific evidence, it is no big deal to eat a few meals occasionally. "
Processing makes bracken safer.
When you must eat bracken, how to avoid the intake of protopterin to the maximum extent? There are only two words in the Upanishads: handling. Yi Zhu, an associate professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University, said in an interview: "Cooking and frying can reduce the content of protopterin to a certain extent, and after soaking in water, alkaline water or plant ash, it can also reduce the content of protopterin." But he finally reminded-"But these only reduced the content, but did not eliminate it. We still have to control the frequency of eating bracken."